Skidmark (Episode)
"Skidmark" is the fourth episode of the fifth season of AMC's Fear The Walking Dead. It is the fifty-seventh episode of the series overall. It premiered on June 23, 2019. It was written by Samir Mehta and directed by Tara Nicole Weyr. Plot Charlie makes a friend, while Strand, Wendell, and Sarah's rescue mission hits a snag. Elsewhere, Alicia, Luciana, and Morgan struggle to fulfill their mission. Synopsis It's October 12 according to a calendar. Daniel is working with his cat, Skidmark, to lure the dead away from a store. He is aware of a rig made to shoot him when he opens a door, so he taps it and dodges the bullets, taking the keys to a car from a walker that emerges before heading out with a bunch of new supplies and Skidmark. Back at his warehouse, he puts away the rations, tears off a day from his calendar, and cooks dinner with Skidmark. That night, Strand sends Charlie to check out Daniel's plane. She finds it and radios him, Sarah, and Wendell so Strand instructs her to open the gate. Skidmark finds Charlie and meows at her, causing Daniel to investigate. Charlie hides in Daniel's new car but Skidmark follows her as he approaches and loads up the truck with guns. Strand wants Charlie to run but she insists on staying as Daniel leaves in the truck. The next day at the gas station, Luciana feeds Dylan and gives him a book to read. Morgan tries radioing June, John, and Dwight and then says they must be out of range as they search for Sherry. Dylan lies and tells the others about a group who created the walker barricades and where their camp is. Morgan and Alicia head out to investigate while Luciana stays behind to fix the long-range antenna with Dylan's help. Meanwhile, Strand and Sarah are loading up the plane at Salazar's compound. He realizes some of the gages from the cockpit are missing and then sees a note that says “I already said no! Channel 8.” Strand turns his walkie to the channel and radios Daniel, who assures him he’s far from the warehouse, but when he gets back he’ll kill him. Sarah radios Daniel next and he advises her to stay away from Strand. He then tells Charlie to show herself, which she does. “I am going to save her from you,” Daniel tells Strand. Strand tries to plan his next moves and Sarah suggests they search the warehouse for the plane parts. On the road, Charlie asks if Daniel set up the traps in the stores and he says he hasn’t, so she asks why he’s been disarming them. “You ask too many questions,” he says, as he plays a cassette on the boombox. Charlie recognizes it and the two begin to bond. Back at the station, Luciana begins fixing the antenna and tells Dylan the story behind The Little Prince. She then sends him inside for duct tape. However, Dylan radios for his siblings on a secret channel. They tell him Morgan and the group have been cutting down their walkers. Dylan says he didn’t send them that way so it must be someone else. Suddenly, Max and Annie spot a CRM member beheading walkers down the road. They hide and Dylan asks if they're okay but is nearly caught on the radio by Luciana. At an abandoned grocery store full of walkers, Daniel tells Charlie to wait in the car as he and Skidmark check it out. Charlie appears behind him and comes up with a distraction plan, impressing him. Afterward, he starts breaking in from the back as the walkers become interested in Skidmark. One of the walkers sets off the gun, which shatters the glass and allows the walkers to break free. Daniel, Charlie, and Skidmark rush back into the car and slowly drive away. Back in the woods, Morgan and Alicia don’t find the camp Dylan told them about so they radio Luciana. However, Dylan grabs the walkie and tells them to go to the old utility road. He explains his siblings aren’t dead but they need help and that he lied about everything, angering them. Meanwhile, Max and Annie crawl out of hiding and are immediately attacked by walkers. Annie drops her gun and twists her ankle, so Max carries her away. Meanwhile, Strand radios Daniel and begs him to bring the instruments back and he says he will, but they’re bringing a herd of walkers with them. He gives him instructions about returning but Sarah says she broke their fence down to free the plane. Daniel stops the truck and tells Charlie to drive the truck back to Strand to give him the instruments while he deals with the walkers. She leaves as he leads them away. Charlie returns to the warehouse and gives Strand the plane instruments. Suspicious, Strand radios Daniel to ask if he’s putting him in danger. Daniel tells him he wants to get back at him for lying to him about Ofelia, confusing the others. Strand explains how he lied about Ofelia’s whereabouts and prevented him from saying goodbye before she died. Charlie says that despite their past, they need to save Daniel. In the woods, Morgan and Alicia save Annie and Max from walkers and offer to help. Suddenly, a dozen kids armed with assault rifles surround them. “It’s not just us,” Annie says. On the road, Sarah and Wendell arrive in Al's van to help Daniel, but the machine gun lever doesn’t shoot, so Daniel hides underneath. Strand and Charlie then arrive in a truck with the plane in the back. Strand leads the walkers towards him, turns on the propellers, and watches as the walkers kill themselves until the plane engines stop. Strand confronts Daniel, who tells him he won’t shoot him after all. Back in the woods, Dylan radios to Annie and tells her that Morgan and Alicia are friendly. Max convinces her to tell the group to put down their weapons and agrees to help them find Al, but states that they were telling the truth about being unable to leave. Morgan quickly realizes that the kids are the children of the people they found at Camp Cackleberry and offers his condolences. At the warehouse, Charlie asks Daniel what he would have said to Ofelia and he says, “Every day brings a chance to start over.” He admits she could use that advice and then reveals he has to leave to take care of something. Charlie asks if she can come along but he says her friends need her more. He hands her Skidmark and says they can have everything in his warehouse except for a cigar, which is for when things get better. A while later, Strand radios Luciana to tell her about the broken plane. Dylan suggests that instead, the group repair their crashed plane like the protagonist of The Little Prince did. Luciana smiles at this. Elsewhere, Morgan and Alicia follow Annie, Max, and the kids towards where they saw the CRM people. Morgan tells Alicia about losing his wife and son. Suddenly, a helicopter flies overhead. "Those people, they came in that," Annie explains and suggests that they are leaving as they got what they came for, while Morgan and Alicia look on stunned as the helicopter flies away. Other Cast Uncredited *Sydney Lemmon as Isabelle *Raja Afghani as Skidmark Deaths *Multiple unnamed people (Alive, Confirmed Fate; Zombified) Trivia *It is confirmed in this episode that the season takes place in October. **The date shown on Daniel's calendar at the beginning is October 12 and he changes it to the 13th. It is October 14 at the end of the episode. **This means that Season 8 of the main show also took place in or around October a year before the events of this season. *This episode is the third episode of the companion series where the episode title is a character's name, the first being "Pablo & Jessica" and the second being "Laura". *It is revealed that Charlie spent weeks at the Dell Diamond Baseball Stadium before she was discovered as a spy for the Vultures. *Daniel reveals that his hatred of Strand is not for shooting him in the face, but deceiving him about Ofelia as seen in "Burning in Water, Drowning in Flame". As a result, Daniel never got to say what he needed to to Ofelia before she died. *Daniel explains that he inherited his warehouse from the man who set all of the deadly traps he has been disarming. At the end of the episode, he states that he stayed there for so long to do something and he must continue his work. *One of the songs Daniel plays is "Death Letter Blues" by Son House. *Strand comments on the plane, "Not my style or my color," is a callback to when he saw Ilene Stowe's wedding gift for her daughter, a car, and commented, "My style and my color" in "The New Frontier". *Daniel reveals that he was given a cigar by someone for when things got better, possibly referring to Abraham Ford, as he is known to smoke cigars. *When Charlie tells Daniel about her past, she is presumably speaking about her time with the Vultures, though she doesn't mention them by name. *Max, Annie, and Dylan are revealed to be part of a larger group of children, the children of the people who perished at Camp Cackleberry. **The episode leaves it unclear if any of the kids have radiation sickness as their parents did from the camp's fight with the radioactive herd. *Morgan reveals to Alicia part of what happened to his wife Jenny and son Duane. Morgan's comment suggests that he may have never put down Duane as he tells Alicia that his wife "was" Jenny and his son "is" Duane. *John Dorie, June, and Dwight are mentioned to be out searching for Sherry. *During the episode, Morgan encounters a walker at a bird trap and checks its chest before putting it down. This is a reference to "The Hurt That Will Happen" where its revealed that Grace put up bird traps for walkers, one such trap ultimately costing Morgan his staff. Morgan checks the walker to ensure that it doesn't have a dosimeter and is thus not radioactive before putting it down. *Morgan continues to use an old pipe due to losing his staff. It is later taken by Annie when Morgan and Alicia disarm and she hangs onto it afterwards, apparently for use as a walking stick due to her leg injury. Category:Episodes Category:Fear The Walking Dead Category:TV Episodes Category:Season 5 (Fear the Walking Dead)